Page 69 of Shift Change

Messer coughed up blood, and when I hit him again, I realized I wasn’t just mad. I was scared shitless.

Please let Nate be okay.

Hands tugged at me, and someone was yelling. There was a lot of blood. Messer’s face was a mess of it, my hands were covered in it, and the ice was splattered with it.

Please let Nate be okay.

I was still beating the shit out of Messer when time staggered. All at once, I couldn’t find the strength to land another punch, and I slumped over, struggling for breath. My knuckles throbbed. Despite the screaming crowd, I heard Messer groan. I barely noticed when the refs wrenched me off him.

Nate was standing nearby, his eyes wide. I caught his gaze and mouthed, “You okay?”

He nodded and threw me a little smile.

The ref barked my name while I exhaled for the first time since the beating began. My ears were ringing, but I heard him say, “You’re out of here. Get your ass off my ice.”

I didn’t wait for them to grab me. Instead, I turned and headed for the tunnel, holding my head high. Fuck Messer.The bastard had tried to hurt my man, and he deserved what he got. I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

Halfway down the tunnel, I stopped short.

My man.

When I’d been terrified that Messer had hurt Nate, I lost my mind because I thought he’d hurt my man.Messer tried to hurt my man.

My chest squeezed, and I felt so dizzy I had to brace myself against the wall. While my heart pounded like I’d run five miles, the chant circled through my mind:my man, my man, my man.

Jared Hart, the offensive coach, came up behind me. “Are you okay, Dog?”

“Yeah. Needed a minute to breathe.”

“Let’s get you someplace you can sit.” He pulled my hand from the wall, leaving it smeared with Messer’s blood, and walked me to the locker room.

After he eased me into my stall, I asked, “How’s Messer?”

“They threw him out too. He got up without any help and ran his mouth the whole time he stormed off the ice. Flipped off the crowd and yelled at us all to go fuck ourselves as he went by the bench. His face is a mess, but he’ll be fine. Takes a lot to kill a cockroach.”

After Hart left, the trainer came in to examine me. As he led me back for an X-ray, I heard the chant again.My man, my man, my man.

Holy shit.

I knew. I’d known in Miami. Nate and I weren’t messing around, and we weren’t ROD friends. I was hell and gone over him, and now I had to figure out what the fuck to do about it.

22

holky & mad dog

Holky

I didn’t knowexactly what had happened with Chuck’s meltdown, but two things were crystal clear. One: I never, under any circumstances, wanted to be on the receiving end of that kind of fury. And two: I was hard as a rock.

Was that messed up? Probably. There was no universe in which watching him fly into a full-on, bloodthirsty rage should’ve lit up every nerve in my body like the goddamn Rockefeller Center Christmas tree. But it had, and no matter how much I tried to push it down or think it was screwed up, the excitement wasn’t going anywhere.

Guys fought for their teammates all the time. That’s hockey—we protect our own and drop the gloves when someone crosses the line. But what happened tonight wasn’t any of that.

Chuck hadn’t merely stood up for me. He’d unraveled because Messer hadn’t tried to stop me from scoring; he’d tried to hurt me. He beat me with his stick and kicked me with his fucking skate. It was an attack, not a dirty play, and Chuck lost his mind. He didn’t fight Messer; he buried him. He beat him into the ice because it was personal. Not to Messer, maybe, but to Chuck.

That’s what undid me. No one had ever gone off like that for me. Chuck fought like my life was on the line, and… fuck, I guess he thought it was. Now I was a giant ball of feelings, horny as hell, and overwhelmed by the realization that someone thought I was worth going to war to protect. For the first time in my life, someone saw me get hurt, and instead of turning away, he fucking burned the world down.

Chuck was my best friend. My ROD friend. But this time, I couldn’t throw up a distraction and pretend what we had was some unusual, convenient arrangement. There was no question we had to talk about what was happening between us—had happenedbetween us—but that could wait until tomorrow. Tonight, I would give him the best orgasms of his life, one after another, until he couldn’t come anymore.

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